July, 2013

The Las Vegas Knockouts pay musical tribute to Mike Ness and Social Distortion

Please note, The Knockouts have been rescheduled from July 27 to Aug 3.

Unofficial music lore puts responsibility for tribute bands on Australia. A million miles from nowhere, the great outback was too remote to attract big British or American acts, so she was forced to make her own copies.

But as proud as Australia might be of her tribute bands, the real history of the genre starts elsewhere. If any one person can lay claim to sparking the movement, that would be Tupelo, Mississippi’s Elvis Aaron Presley, who had impersonators almost from day one. If any one band can lay claim, that’s The Beatles, whose tribute act The Buggs released their first and only album, The Beetle Beat, in 1964.

Until the late 1990s, however, tribute acts remained largely under the radar, little more than novelty knock-offs of the real thing. Then sometime around the turn of the century, tribute bands evolved into a viable genre of their own.

For Las Vegas native Kace King, a punk-rocker in his youth and now the lead singer for The Knockouts, a Social Distortion tribute band, the transition was driven largely by necessity.

“Fast forward from my punk rock band days to trying to make money, because local bands don’t usually make money,” King recounts of his days in Pimp and Never Was, both successful Las Vegas punk acts. “We did play Hard Rock, we did play Mandalay Bay, we did play big venues back then, but it was really difficult to make ends meet as a local band.”

The older King got, the more necessary things like food and shelter became, and questions about the obvious became harder to ignore. “A lot of the local bands were starting to see that ‘Hey, we can’t make money.’ How do we make money as a band?”

In Las Vegas at least, the answer was clear, if not entirely satisfying. “You jump into the casinos — but you can’t play your own music, because people don’t want to hear it. So what was happening was, people were transitioning into tribute bands, and this was the start of the tribute band movement that you see in Vegas every single day.”

All of sudden, paying the bills wasn’t nearly so difficult. “I jumped into an 80s cover band called Loveshack. You play Thursday, Friday, Saturday nights, and you would make good money, that was thing.”

But while the job paid well, it wasn’t entirely satisfying. “I always wanted to put together a tribute band to Social D because I just love the band. And I didn’t care if I made money or not. So that’s what I did on the side to have fun.”

That was 12 years ago, and in fits and starts, The Knockouts have been playing together ever since. They play The FCC Phnom Penh on Aug 3.

W hen the crisp white sails of the Santa Maria unfurled in the Spanish port of Palos on 3 August 1492, few could have anticipated the cultural shockwaves that would encircle the globe as a result of its impending voyage. The course was set west-south-west, and Christopher Columbus – who pompously referred to himself throughout his journals as ‘the Admiral’ – had been charged to steer his flagship over the waves to Asia, where riches of gold, pearl and spice awaited.

On 12 October that same year, allowing the Admiral to escape mutiny only by the narrowest of margins, land was finally spotted – albeit not the intended destination – and Columbus, accompanied by the captains of the Nina and the Pinta, waded ashore an island in the Bahamas known locally as Guanahani. The New World had officially been discovered.

Except it wasn’t entirely new. By the time the Americas were ‘discovered’ by history’s most controversial explorer, they were already home to millions of people, along with fully functioning cities, orchards, canals and causeways. “They brought balls of spun cotton and parrots and javelins and other little things that it would be tiresome to write down, and they gave everything for anything that was given to them,” Columbus wrote of the native Americans shortly after his first encounter. “I was attentive and laboured to find out if there was any gold.”

Among the ‘other little things’ developed by these indigenous folk of the Americas was their own musical heritage. In Mayan culture, simple drums and flutes were a staple of most households, from tortoiseshell maracas to ocarinas crafted from bone. In return, the Spanish explorers brought language – and it was language that would ultimately alter the course of Latin music forever.

Drawing on rich musical traditions from both the European and Arab worlds, the explorers introduced, among other things, string instruments. They also introduced African slaves who, in turn, brought the rousing African beats that have since shaped everything from salsa to merengue.

But while Columbus may have failed in his mission to reach Asian shores, the Latin music traditions that evolved in the post-Admiral Americas are finally succeeding. Among their most notable frontiersmen are Luna Negra (Black Moon), a product of Cuba circa 1999. The band’s poetic flourishes and musical “stroll through the Caribbean, alternating Cuban son with Dominican merengue, the Guaracha with Bradley and Brazilian Batucada” won swift and widespread acclaim, and by 2005 they’d landed in China for the start of a two-year tour.

“The concept of ‘Latin music’ covers a tremendous wealth, influence and originality adopted between the discoverers and clearly perfected by the natives of each region,” says Luna Negra keyboardist Yunichi Acosta Hernández. “Undoubtedly, this style is one of the richest musical worldwide. In its general form, Latin music reflects both the music and dances of the world: hispano America. You cannot fail to mention in Latin music, los Latinos! That perfectly reflects their idiosyncrasies. That spontaneous joy they exude through the pores, and the constant desire to spend a very good time [and] to share with the world his eternal carnival.”

Since 2010, Luna Negra have been resident at the Saigon Saigon Bar atop the famed Caravelle Hotel in Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam (once home to Warapo, another of Cuba’s most famous musical sons and a regular here at The FCC in Phnom Penh). Inspiration, say the band, includes Grammy award-winning Colombian singer and composer Carlos Vives, along with Dominican singer/sosngwriter Juan Luis Guerra, who at last count had sold more than 30 million albums. And critics have called Luna Negra’s work ‘a new twist on the classic Cuban sound’: expect soul-stirring electric violin, trademark Latin rhythms and emotive lyrics.